Antonio Ortega will resume Associate Chair duties in August.

Sawchuk said the duties of the post included working closely with student affairs staff, and administering Ph.D. programs, advisement, teaching assistants, fellowships, scholarships and financial aid, faculty teaching assignments, and student recruiting and retention events.

Ortega joined USC in 1994 after receiving his Ph.D. from Columbia University. He is a member and past director of the Signal and Image Processing Institute (SIPI). His research interests are in signal analysis and compression, including applications such as image and video coding, information processing in sensor networks and distributed classification/recognition.

He is the author or co-author of nearly 200 publications in international journals and conferences. He was won several best paper and other awards, and was elected an IEEE Fellow in 2007.

Todd Brun has been Associate Chair since June 2007. He will be on sabbatical for the Fall 2009 and Spring 2010 semesters.

"I welcome Antonio Ortega to his new appointment as Associate Chair, and express my gratitude to Prof. Todd Brun for his outstanding performance in this position since June 2007, said Sawchuk. I greatly appreciate Todd's skill, dedication and service during his two years in this position."